Black Muslims Research Articles

How do parole boards respond to large, societal shocks? Evidence from the 9/11 terrorist attacks

We provide the first evidence of the impact of 9/11 on outcomes for Muslims in the US criminal justice system. We focus on parole outcomes of Black Muslim men in the state of Georgia, and find large post-9/11 declines in the likelihood of being granted parole and a subsequent 23% relative increase in prison time for Muslim inmates. These impacts persisted for several years after 9/11 and were larger for inmates with higher levels of recidivism risk. We argue that these effects reflect unwarranted disparities driven by the decision-making of parole board members post-9/11.

Mourning the greatest: “unforgivably black” and peacefully Muslim Muhammad Ali

ABSTRACT When Muhammad Ali died in June 2016, media were filled with remembrances of the boxer. Some memories focused on what he meant to his home state of Kentucky, or how an individual had bonded with their father while watching Ali in the ring. Others focused on what Ali’s status as a celebrity Black Muslim man meant to them. The boxer who called himself “the Greatest” joined the Nation of Islam after his first fight with Sonny Liston in 1964 and later became a Sufi Muslim. Islam, in its many forms, is viewed with suspicion in the United States and Ali was likely the most visible Muslim American during his lifetime. This research examines how writers remembered Ali in the week after his death and identifies three themes which seemed most prominent: Ali as the proud Black Muslim man, Ali as freedom fighter, and Ali as an embodiment of peace.

“I could have married in Europe, if I wanted to” How black migrant men challenge moralizing and racializing discourses when returning to Senegal

ABSTRACT Marriage offers one of the few routes for Senegalese migrants to enter Europe and settle there legally, and it is often assumed that migrants marry just for a residence permit. “Marriage migration” is highly scrutinized by state actors, whose admission practices and their consequences have been the focus of much research. Less, however, is known about the perspectives of migrants who left Europe in response to these practices. Drawing on one year of ethnographic fieldwork, we show how male Senegalese returnees and deportees challenge the idea that men want to marry a European resident at all costs. These men are spatially excluded from Europe but they discursively regain their dignity by returning to Senegal. Their return also challenges gendered and racialized European narratives about dangerous and hypersexual black Muslim males, and at the same time reinforces their positioning in moral hierarchies about love and marriage.

How American Am I?

Abstract Much sociological attention has focused on Black identity within the United States. Less attention, however, has been given to understanding how immigrant and native-born streams of U.S. Black Muslims articulate American identity. In this study I ask: how do second-generation Black American Muslims and indigenous Black American Muslims compare in the ways they narrate connections among race, American identity, and Islam? Using data from thirty-one in-depth interviews with Black Muslims living in Houston, TX, I find that racial double-consciousness complicates American identity for respondents. While indigenous Black American respondents critique racist U.S. histories and structural inequities, I argue that in certain spaces Muslim identity reinforces American identity. For second-generation respondents, however, American identity is reinforced through embracing immigrant status. This study extends Du Boisian double-consciousness by making a case for “layered double-consciousness.” I argue that layered double-consciousness better explains how Black Muslims perceive their racial, religious, and national identities across macro levels within the context of the United States and meso levels within the Muslim American community.

The Representation of Islam in Alice Walker’s Everyday Use

The present study explores the image of Islam as portrayed in Alice Walker’s Everyday Use. The study seeks to examine the nature of the interplay between Islam and the local community of the story in terms of the way fundamental Islam is received and accommodated within the context of conflicting worldviews. Walker’s Everyday Use unfolds, seamlessly, a portrait that captures the way Fundamental Islam is introduced and received, the Muslim community and its ethos, and the Muslim Individuals as torn between their commitment to Islamic tradition and the spell of trendy Black social movements to which they belong. Walker’s Everyday Use also sheds light on some threads of connection between Islam and Black Americans at the time. For all the clumsiness in his manner, ‘Hakim a barber’, the Black Muslim, remains committed to core Islamic values like offering traditional Islamic greetings of peace, abstaining from eating pork, and adopting the Islamic attitude of showing courtesy to women. Furthermore, the Muslim community in Walker’s Everyday Use is conjectured through the Christian narrator’s eyes as the epitome of African-American values of pride and empowerment.

Muhammad Abdullah, Lahore-Ahmadi Americans and the Black Muslims of America

Abstract Imam Muhammad Abdullah (1905–1992) has played a pivotal role shaping the Islamic experience in Fiji and America, two vastly different countries that spanned over six decades. Yet even today, his real historic identity is still shrouded in murky obscurity while his legacy lay mired by layers of confusing myths. This makes him at once fascinating and frustrating. Because Abdullah remains a figure of devotion and a contested site of memory across Islamic movements, it heightens the necessity amongst scholars to disentangle the mythical Abdullah from the historical Abdullah. This essay investigates Abdullah and the Lahore-Ahmadi’s complex entanglements with Wallace Muhammad’s black Muslim community. Their paths were curiously erratic and messy; at times intersecting on a personal, co-conspiratorial level in early 1960s Philadelphia and at other periods they chartered their own separate ways in the mid 1960s after the murderous bloodbaths of Nation of Islam’s religious feuds. From 1970, the pair rekindled their collaboration as their respective organizations became symbiotically intertwined with mixed ramifications.

Symbolism of Malcolm’s Nicknames and Names in The Autobiography of Malcolm X

This paper deals with the symbolism of Malcolm’s nicknames and names in The Autobiography of Malcolm X (Malcolm X & Haley, 2015). The scrutiny of these nicknames and names stands for an outstanding attempt to surface a good understanding of the most ambiguous and changeable figure of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Nicknames such as Homeboy, Red, and Satan are very evocative in his life story because they reveal dark and nightmarish stereotypes and episodes of his depravity process in ghettoes and in prison during his childhood and adolescence. This trilogy of nicknames shows how he is involved in illegal and immoral activities such as gambling, gang life, drug dealings, and housebreakings. Therefore, names such as Malcolm X, El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, and Omowale, on their behalf, introduce the reader to the protagonist’ rebirth process under Islamic influences with the perspective of quest of true identity on American soil and in Africa. They show how he becomes a radical Black Muslim, how he adopts orthodox Islam in Mecca, and how he ties a strong attachment to Africa.

“We Can Only Go So Far”: Employing Intersectionality in Research with Middle-Class Black Women and Black Muslim Women

How to engage and apply intersectionality is still a point of contention among scholars. In this conceptual paper, we use examples from our preliminary research on the experiences of middle-class Black women with depression and Black Muslim women who have experienced intimate partner violence to illustrate how we applied intersectionality as a framework and a method. We highlight the foundational literature that informed our applications. We then describe how we employed intersectionality in our respective studies. Through our reflections, we conclude that intersectionality was, and continues to be, a necessary frame for guiding our work due to its rendering visible for critique and intervention categories of privilege and oppression and our centering the experiences of Black women. We, however, note having felt limited in our ability to fully apply intersectionality in our preliminary research. We conclude that what was missing for us reflects critiques of a gap in social work feminist scholarship that is a central tenet of intersectionality: liberation. We posit ways of doing intersectional research that liberates by offering recommendations for research, education, and policy.

Rejoicing of the hearts: Turkish constructions of Muslim whiteness in Africa south of the Sahara

AbstractThis article analyses the racial framing of the humanitarian encounter between Turkish and African Muslims as a trope of first contact. Intensifying humanitarian relations with Africa south of the Sahara, in tandem with the foreign policy of the AKP (Justice and Development Party), has led to the emergence of a racialized affective regime in Turkey that endows Islamic philanthropy with new racial meanings. This article argues that racial subjects such as the White Muslim and the Black Muslim are produced through the affective labour of humanitarian volunteers and others, who narrativize and circulate experiences of first contact in Turkey. Based on a multi-sited ethnography in Turkey, Tanzania, Senegal, Gambia and Benin, this article explores race-making as affective labour. Taking on Berg and Ramos-Zayas’s call for an anthropological theorization of race and affect, it develops a critical framework to examine how humanitarian voluntarism produces differently racialized subjects. In order to do so, this analysis draws on James Baldwin’s insights into the racial and affective politics of the first contact to discuss how Turkish humanitarians build on and alter the racialized affective regime Baldwin describes.

From American to Cisse: Sufism and the remaking of diasporic ties across the Atlantic

AbstractSince the 1980s, hundreds of predominantly working-class African-American Muslims have travelled or relocated to the rural yet renowned city of Medina Baye, Senegal. They were invited there by Shaykh Hassan Cisse, a Senegalese Islamic scholar and leader in the Tijani tariqa (Sufi order). This article focuses on the experiences of African-American and fellow diaspora Black Muslims living and learning with African Muslims in the Tijani hub of Medina Baye. It interrogates the assumptions, expectations and misunderstandings that characterize relationships between the two groups. I argue that, as members of the Tijani tariqa, diaspora Black disciples become integrated within the local system of collective care modelled by African disciples. Complicating analyses of African–diasporic exchanges that tend to differentiate and hierarchize the interconnected economic hardships facing diaspora Black and continental African communities, I argue that the relationship between these groups illustrates the role of Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse’s branch of the Tijani tariqa as a counterhegemonic social movement offering new paradigms of social and economic reciprocity that enable Black Muslims on both sides of the Atlantic to mitigate the contemporary impacts of racial capitalism and global apartheid.

Black Muslims and the Angels of Afrofuturism

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size AcknowledgmentsHeartfelt thanks to Abbas Rattani, Shimul Chowdhury, and Yusuf Siddiquee,organizers of the AlHamdu/Muslim Futurism project where this work was first presented. Heartfeltthanks to the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art's Building Bridges initiative for supporting this work. And heartfelt thanks to the Sun Ra estate, Ihnfinity corporation, and Amina Baraka—as well as Camae Ayewa, Chelle Barbour, Antoinette Jackson, Jenn Nkiru, Tariq Touré, and Vanessa Taylor—for permissions, encouragement, inspiration, grace, and future consciousness.Additional informationNotes on contributorsEllen McLarneyEllen McLarney is Director of the Duke Islamic Studies Center and Associate Professor of Arabic Culture working on two interrelated projects: one on “Black Muslims and Racial Justice in the American South” and another a Doris Duke Foundation’s Building Bridges initiative featuring Muslim American poets and musicians of African descent. The aim is engaging in reckoning, consciousness raising, and reconciliation through the arts while raising awareness about anti-Black and anti-Muslim bias in the North Atlantic.Solayman IdrisSolayman Idris’s Times of the Signs trilogy applies metaphysical principles, strategic planning and grand design to African American global futures. Idris’s New World Mahdist Literatures politicize weapons of spiritual war and call for establishment the newest continental African Nation State, “Orun,” as reparations for American Descendants of Slaves. A literary Ark of the Covenant Sunrise in the West, StarLogic, and Dusk Orientalis tell us how we got here and guide Us to where We’re going …

Spotlight: Kam Copeland

Spotlight:Kam Copeland TreaAndrea M. Russworm Kam Copeland is a PhD candidate in Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Southern California and Dissertation Fellow in African and African Diaspora Studies at Boston College. Currently, he is writing his dissertation, "Muhammad Gazes: Islam, Blackness, and Resistance Cinema in the US," a representational history of Black American Muslims in cinema. This project also explores how Black Muslims have developed alternative gazes and liberatory cinematic practices to resist dominant framings of Muslimness in US media. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Kam Copeland. Photograph courtesy of Kam Copeland. TreaAndrea M. Russworm: What are some of the consistent stories and insights among texts that are central to your research on media representations of US Black American Muslims? Kam Copeland: The first chapter of my dissertation focuses on The Hate That Hate Produced (WNTA-TV, 1959), a television documentary by Louis Lomax and Mike Wallace about the growth of Black Nationalism that aired in New York. With a primary emphasis on the Nation of Islam (NOI)—which the broadcast refers to as "the Black Muslims"—The Hate That Hate Produced [End Page 8] represents Black Muslimness as theologically inferior and politically menacing to white Western society. I argue that this broadcast produced the trope of the Black Muslim fanatic—a combination of the cinematic caricatures of the Black brute and the Muslim terrorist—via the white hegemonic gaze. Nevertheless, that trope was rejected by a Black radical gaze that reimagined revolutionaries who critiqued white supremacy and US empire (such as Malcolm X) as Third World heroes. After the death of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, new Black public affairs television programs—such as Black Journal (NET/PBS, 1968–1977), Soul! (WNDT, 1968–1973), and Say Brother (WGBH, 1968–1997)—adopted the latter approach to reject the hegemonic gaze's representation of Black Muslimness. The image of the fanatic and the Third World hero is a dichotomy that I trace from the airing of The Hate That Hate Produced to contemporary representations. Russworm: I know your work also argues for considering media through the rubric of the cinematic. What's so generative for you about this approach? Copeland: In centering Black gazes, I focus on collective viewing practices. For example, St. Clair Bourne's documentary The Nation of Common Sense (1970), which aired on the television program Black Journal and profiled the day-to-day lives of Muslims in the NOI, was shown to audiences at banquets and other events hosted by mosques throughout the country. This allowed Muslim audiences to engage in a unified viewing experience, as though watching films at a cinema, while expressing melodic sounds of approval in line with the call-and-response traditions that exist in spiritual expressions throughout the African diaspora. I am also interested in how scholars such as Kara Keeling conceptualize various forms of the moving image, using the rubric of the cinematic to challenge dominant understandings of race, class, and gender.1 While my research and teaching interests focus on Black religion and media, this approach provides me with a framework that emphasizes collective struggle and helps me explore how theologies of Black liberation are mapped onto cinematic experiences and practices. Russworm: Tell us about a film that invites connections about race and religion and also prioritizes a Black cinematic gaze. Copeland: A chapter of my dissertation centers home videos produced in the late 1970s by the El Rukns (formerly known as the Blackstone Rangers), a Chicago-based street organization. While serving a prison sentence, Blackstone Ranger co-founder Jeff Fort embraced Islam and became known as Abdul Malik Ka'bah; he would also change the name of his organization to El Rukn. Although they would eventually embrace Sunni Islam, the El Rukns were initially affiliated with the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA), a Muslim movement that arose during the Great Migration in the early twentieth century. In the late 1970s, the El Rukns would host parties at their mosque, or headquarters. Affectionately referred to as "The Fort," it was located at 3947 South Drexel Blvd. in an edifice formerly known as the Oakland Square Theatre. Two home videos...

The Poetry of a Prison Uprising

The Poetry of a Prison Uprising Elias Rodriques (bio) When the Smoke Cleared: Attica Prison Poems and Journal ed. by Celes Tisdale Duke University Press, 2022, pp. 152 Click for larger view View full resolution Prisoners in Attica on September 10, 1971 (Bettmann/Getty Images) [End Page 100] The story of Attica could be said to begin in 1929, when uprisings at Dannemora and Auburn prisons captivated New York state. Conditions at the prisons (including overcrowding, low wages, and more), rebellions in response to those conditions, and assaults on prisoners by police and armed citizens occasioned a visit from Governor Franklin D. Roosevelt. "The time has come," Roosevelt said after visiting Dannemora and nearby Great Meadow Prison, "when New York can no longer tolerate prisons like Dannemora and Auburn." In the wake of the prisoners taking control of their facilities and of governmental outcry, the state did not demolish either prison (both are still operational today). Instead, it built a new facility: Attica. From its opening in 1931, Attica showed signs of what was to come. Fifteen days after the prison began operations, Jesse Conklin, incarcerated for forgery, became the first person to escape. A year and a half later, in December 1932, the first uprising occurred. According to the warden at the time, it was caused in part by "a strong distaste among certain . . . convicts for pick and shovel work." If there was a "distaste" for labor, the events of the following decades suggest that the prisoners resented their work because of the way the prison denigrated its laborers. During that time, according to the critic Mark Nowak, people incarcerated at Attica participated in strikes and protests (such as the "sour milk sit-down strike"), lawsuits (including more than a hundred complaints filed by Black Muslims demanding religious freedom), and even, in 1962, a sit-in coordinated across four New York prisons. Using political protests and labor actions, people incarcerated at Attica fought for better work conditions, for their rights, and for their liberation. They were not the lazy laborers whom the warden suggested deserved the punishment they received; they were workers and people who could and did resist the institution's dehumanization. It is perhaps unsurprising, then, that such a politically active group responded forcefully to the killing of the Black Marxist George Jackson, a prisoner at San Quentin, in August 1971. On September 9, 1,300 prisoners took control of Attica. Governing themselves through representative democracy, they drafted a list of demands, which included minimum-wage payment for their forced labor, an end to the censorship of reading materials, and an expansion of the prison's education system. After four days, armed forces stormed the prison, resulting in the deaths of thirty-two prisoners and eleven hostages. Though the assault by the state brought an end to the prisoners' self-governance, [End Page 101] those who survived did see one of their efforts come to fruition in the form of a poetry workshop that started in 1972, led by Celes Tisdale, a professor at SUNY Buffalo. Tisdale's new book, When the Smoke Cleared: Attica Prison Poems and Journal, collects poems by his students in that workshop and his journal entries from the period. Some of the work was originally published in Tisdale's 1974 book Betcha Ain't, but the new volume also includes never-before-published poems, Tisdale's class handouts, and more. When the Smoke Cleared, accordingly, reveals a great deal about survival in the wake of state violence and about the uses of prison education. ______ On the first day of the course (which was funded in part by a nonprofit and in part by the state), Tisdale was not so much concerned with the curriculum as anxious about what would happen. He wrote in his journal, "Many times have I basked in the glory of applause, adulation, recognition as I interpreted the Black poet masters. But, today, I wait in painful/joyful anticipation of meeting those humanity-scarred men who must express themselves or perish from anonymity." In the hours that followed, he met his workshop participants, some of whom he recognized from the neighborhood where he grew up, in nearby Buffalo...

Somali experiences of first wave Caabuqa-corona: an analysis of high COVID-19 mortality and infection levels in London�s East End, 2020

This article focuses on the experiences of a minoritised black Muslim community in London during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020. It shows that many Somali families, living in a high-density area of the East End, experienced acutely high infection and death rates from late March. The reasons for this were found to be late lockdown, a top-down community-insensitive public health approach, and the way that many of the work force were in highly vulnerable occupations. However, high rates were then prolonged due to the legacy of historic poverty, housing density and institutional racism. Culture and locally specific responses were less significant factors but overall had a positive impact in mitigation. However, the situation with regard to mental health remains bleak. This research suggests more trained Somali health experts, community sensitive data, trauma informed care, and use of local networks could help reduce future vulnerabilities and health poverty.

Ethnic conflicts and the power of collective identity in Guy Gunaratne's In Our Mad and Furious City (2018)

AbstractLonglisted for the Booker Prize 2018 and winner of the International Dylan Thomas Prize 2019, Guy Gunaratne's debut novel, In Our Mad and Furious City (2018), depicts a cultural conflict unfolding in contemporary London. Set off as the result of a killing of a white soldier by a black Muslim boy, violent riots force Yusuf, a son of immigrants from Pakistan, to recognise his migrant background and question his sense of self and belonging in the city. At the same time, for Nelson and Caroline, immigrants of a different time, the events evoke the memories of the past that haunts them and prove that the cultural divide they witnessed decades ago still prevails. By following the narratives of these characters and depicting violent ethnic clashes, the novel captures the driving forces of blind ethnic brutality on the one hand and the loss of a meaningful sense of self on the other. Drawing on Vamik Volkan's studies on large‐group psychology and collective trauma, this article analyses the power of the collective identity—be it a nation, an ethnicity, or a religious movement—in times of crisis and examines its influence on a personal sense of self. In Our Mad and Furious City illustrates the many ways in which the impact of the shared cultural identity not only generates cultural conflicts but can also lead to displacement and identity crises. This article explores the intricate ways in which Gunaratne's transcultural narrative depicts these age‐old yet contemporary issues.

Devotion, Anti-Imperialism, and the Search for the Stories of Black Muslims in Twentieth-Century Guyana

The history of Black Muslims in Guyana is a topic not yet studied in much depth. Part of the reason for this gap in the historical record is the absence of materials in conventional archives and newspapers. Discussions of Muslims in Guyana also often centre on the stories of South Asian indentured migrants who formed the majority of the Muslim Guyanese population in the twentieth century. Yet, the practice of Islam developed amongst Black-Guyanese Muslims in relation to the Pan-Africanist movements of the 1940s that aligned anti-imperialism and Black identity with adoptions of Islam, and is therefore a key milestone in the Black-Muslim-Guyanese story. The writings of Malik Shabazz, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood of Guyana, are particularly helpful in understanding the development of Islam amongst Black Guyanese because they reveal an anti-imperial religious pedagogy imbedded in a process of asserting a Black Muslim identity. While this research note is by no means exhaustive of the experiences, identities, and stories of Black Muslims in twentieth-century Guyana, it sheds some light on existing historical silences and provides a starting point for a topic that requires much more detailed study.

An Intersectional Analysis of the Recruitment and Participation of Second-Generation African Canadian Adolescent Girls in a Community Basketball Program in Ottawa, Canada

Guided by the experiences and perspectives of sport practitioners, in this paper, an intersectional lens was used to examine age, gender, race, socioeconomic status, and religion and how they relate to the recruitment and participation of second-generation, low-income, African Canadian, Black Muslim, and Christian adolescent girls in a community-based basketball program in Ottawa, Canada. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 11 program coordinators and coaches involved in the City of Ottawa Community Centre Basketball League (CCBL), and reflexive thematic analysis of the data was engaged. The findings were threefold: (a) CCBL coordinators and coaches recognize the importance of representation to enhancing their support to program users; (b) CCBL coaches and coordinators make efforts to build trust with and increase buy-in from first-generation immigrant parents to improve girls’ program participation; and (c) CCBL coaches and coordinators make religious accommodations in response to the needs of Muslim and Christian program users. The findings illustrated that community-based sport programs serving second-generation African Canadian adolescent girls in low-income communities require multifaceted program and outreach strategies that consider the intersecting social experiences of participants to improve recruitment and participation. To conclude, policy and program design and implementation strategies to support the creation of inclusive, equity-driven community-based sport practices were proposed.

THE MANY LIVES OF CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY

THE MANY LIVES OF CONSTANCE BAKER MOTLEY

“A [B]lack Baudelaire”: Linguistic Panic and Symbolism in Amiri Baraka’s 1960s Life and Work

In his infamous Dutchman (1964), Amiri Baraka evokes Baudelaire, the famed forefather of French Symbolism: building upon Véronique Lane’s 2017 monograph, Baraka, a member of the Beat Generation, has a French Genealogy, a practiced knowledge of French Symbolism which begs the application of a Symbolist paradigm to Baraka’s theory, works, and lived experience. In this essay, I justify this Baraka-Symbolist connection before undertaking a structuralist close-reading of both Dutchman and A Black Mass to suggest one understanding of Baraka’s mid-1960s transition from “[B]lack Baudelaire” to Black Muslim. This developmental narrative is founded within the contemporaneous scholarship of Franz Fanon and Baraka’s written take on the Civil Rights Movement. I unpack Baraka’s lived experience through a semiotic rereading of his autobiography alongside Pierre Quillard’s Symbolist play, The Girl With Cut-Off Hands (1891), applying James Harding’s notion of “linguistic panic” to these case studies to narrate Baraka’s development: like the Girl in Quillard’s play, Baraka’s self-genesis is a tale of cutting off (white) extremities, necessarily enacted in both the dramatic and the domestic. Lastly, I accept Baraka’s invitation to interrogate the racial politics of French Symbolism, informed by Mike Sell’s scholarship on the avant-garde, highlighting the Symbolists’ lack of racial sensitivity and the ways in which Baraka’s work draws our eyes to these shortcomings. I conclude that Baraka’s understanding of Symbolism offers us further insight into his radical artistic practices and personal transformation, while demonstrating how Baraka’s use and usurpation of French Symbolism lay bare the racial aporias of the historical avant-garde.

Review: Believing in South Central: Everyday Islam in the City of Angels, by Pamela J. Prickett

In this engaging ethnographic account of an African American masjid in South Central Los Angeles, Pamela J. Prickett explores how Islam is a complete “way of life” that provides guidance on religious practices, community engagement, economic concerns, political activism, and racial justice (2). Prickett expands on Saba Mahmood’s work (2005) by centering on how Islamic practices, not only beliefs, are ways to embody a pious individual self but also to cultivate a more ethical community. In the context of South Central LA, piety “involves the cultivation of virtues that must be achieved through engagement with others” (3). Prickett’s intimate and honest accounting of the conflicts within this community of African American Muslims addresses how working through these struggles is a way for the members to grow closer to God (11).Throughout the book, Pricket astutely presents the specific concerns of this particular Muslim community, such as the racism they face both in United States society and within Muslim American communities, the political and economic struggles, plus the criticism and ignorance they face from Black Christians. This Muslim community is met with a particular challenge to support the significant needs of the South Central LA community. While they seek to help the community with resources, the Muslims are reluctant to let negative forces into the masjid, such as drugs, violence, and sexuality.These conflicts over how to serve the community are the heart of chapter 1, in which Prickett discusses the “symbolic boundary marking” (24) of the members. She explains, “they are pulled by religious obligation to focus on helping the less fortunate in the immediate neighborhood, yet they are pushed by a desire for righteousness to disassociate from people they deem of the hood” (22). She makes an important distinction in this chapter that the members are aware of the institutional barriers to escaping poverty, but they don’t look to religion as a way to magically escape their current conditions. Belief is not about achieving material wealth, as might be preached in Christian prosperity churches, but rather, as Prickett observes, “belief motivating them to move toward something deeper, more existential in character” (28).Chapter 2 uses the death of Imam W. D. Mohammed in 2008 as a jumping off point to examine the transformation of African American Muslims from the Nation of Islam to Sunni Islam. The significant leadership role of Mohammed is shamefully ignored in U.S. religious history. Prickett also discusses the financial collapse of the Nation after Elijah Muhammad’s death in 1975. In chapter 3, she discusses economics: the entrepreneurial projects of the masjid members, the financial struggles of the masjid, and the economic anxieties of the members who live in precarity. Rather than concentrate on poverty and suffering, however, Prickett provides a nuanced analysis of how “money is funny” in this community.Chapter 4 focuses on gender dynamics. While the sermons emphasize that men and women have distinct roles—granting men authority in the mosque and women responsibilities in the domestic space—the African American Muslim women often create their own female networks of support and do not rely on men. Finally, chapter 5 explores class issues, specifically the scrutiny that African American Muslims often face from immigrant Muslims of Arab and South Asian backgrounds. While the ideal is that Islam is a religion without racial hierarchies, immigrant Muslims see the advantages of participating in the American project of anti-Black racism. Through personal stories of institutional racism and micro-aggressions in the mosques, Prickett describes the personal harm of racism and classism, especially when it defines Black Muslims as less pious.Much has been written about the spiritual lives of African Americans, from work on the Black Church, emerging from enslavement, to the Nation of Islam and other Black nationalist religious-political movements. Prickett offers a needed contribution to this literature in her discussion of the religious lives and identities of Black Muslims in the post-NOI era. Another strength of this volume is Prickett’s appealing writing style that is supported by the close connections formed with members of the masjid and her honest reflections of her own positions as a White, non-Muslim researcher. This up-front and at times self-deprecating style allows Prickett to explore the debates and struggles within this masjid. In turn, readers gain an understanding of how Islam is lived out in South Central LA.